Solon Borland

Solon Borland (21 September 1808-1 January 1864) was a US Senator from Arkansas (D) from 30 March 1848 to 11 April 1853, succeeding Ambrose Hundley Sevier and preceding Robert Ward Johnson.

Biography
Solon Borland was born in Suffolk, Virginia in 1808, and his family moved to North Carolina during his youth. In 1831, Borland, serving as a captain, helped to suppress Nat Turner's slave uprising in Southampton County, Virginia. In 1843, after his second wife died, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he founded the influential Arkansas Banner paper. He later served as a major in the US Army's Arkansas volunteer cavalry, and he escaped from Mexican captivity in California to serve as aide-de-camp to General William J. Worth from the Battle of Molino del Rey to the Battle of Chapultepec in September 1847.

In 1848, Borland was elected to the US Senate as a Democrat, but he was unpopular both at home and in the US Congress, and he physically attacked Mississippi senator Henry S. Foote in an 1850 debate over southern rights. In 1853, he resigned from the Senate, and he served as ambassador to Nicaragua until 1854, when he was recalled after stating his desire to see Nicaragua as a US state.

During the American Civil War, Borland joined the Confederate States Army, and he seized Fort Smith, Arkansas with state militia in the opening days of the war. He later raised the 3rd Arkansas Cavalry on 10 June 1861, but he never left Arkansas, and never fought in battle. He died in 1864.